Post-checkup, I don’t watch the State of the Union

SWWIM Every Day
by Emily Rose Cole

by Emily Rose Cole

He will say strong. They always do. The ending’s spoiled.

Spoiled, too, as I learned today from my doctor, probably my spine.

Or, more technically, my thoracic spinal nerves. In one of them,

my doctor thinks, a lesion. Bright erasure. Corrosive smudge.

(Why do I always want these new eyelets in my brain to suggest

light?) Just a little one, she postulates, pre-MRI. A little one

that could turn python, swallow whole my feet. With MS, it’s impossible

to predict an ending—my checkup tests a catalogue of potential

losses: Balance. Reflexes. Vision. Memory. Strength. She holds down

my arms one by one. Push back, she says, and I do. For now. At home,

unfocused on my work or my country, I prime my abdomen

for injection. The drug burns its acidic promise, leaves its welting,

subcutaneous kiss. Stay strong, my dad incants through the phone.

I decline. On Capitol Hill, the President rises to a paroxysm of applause. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Emily Rose Cole is the author of a chapbook, Love & a Loaded Gun, from Minerva Rising Press. She has received awards from Jabberwock Review, Philadelphia Stories, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2018, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Pinch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and is pursuing a PhD in Poetry and Disability Studies at the University of Cincinnati. You can reach her via her website at emilyrosecolepoetry.com.

O Keeper of the Dreaming Skull, I am in Love with Everything

SWWIM Every Day
by Ronda Piszk Broatch

by Ronda Piszk Broatch

red wine tells me so    and poetry

come hell        come mother flooded

 

sky igniting  tossing cottonwoods

upon raftered lids        O gale conjurers

 

O maples in bodacious feather

needle-strewn fir on lawns across town

 

High    I was that       and more than half

gone    I saw like an animal

 

in darkness      all things couched between

the lines           How long must I wait for

 

sanity to return            bear this dis-

quiet like a head in vice-grip

 

muscle-shudder           love-a-lurk

an albino gorilla

 

in my childhood closet            O mother

the tide comes high     nigh your heart

 

and still so much has yet to be conceived

and still our mouths sewn shut resist

 

wind damped against lips       O keeper

of the owls defying night        you sent me

 

little planet      to float on my own

with my little box of bones

 

golden-eyed and bared

into an orbit too long   and undiscovered

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Poet and photographer Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations (MoonPath Press, 2015). Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Ronda is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, a May Swenson Poetry Award finalist, and former editor of Crab Creek Review. Her journal publications include Atlanta Review, Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Fourteen Hills, Mid-American Review, and Public Radio KUOW’s “All Things Considered.” She has work forth-coming in Sycamore Review, Palette Poetry, and Tishman Review.

A Pileated Woodpecker Shares Where to Find God

SWWIM Every Day
by Sarah Carey

by Sarah Carey

I live for what the dead give.

Hidden by leaf screens and branches,

I pillage rotting wood. My tribe fought

long for salvation, after the forests’ razing

dug into ragged stumps, felled trunks,

a miracle of wholeness from fragments,

a feast of insects who thrive on decay.

What’s left when I leave is for others to say.

Should you see my black wings

and red head knocking wood for nourishment,

you might ask if I believe God is dead,

as Altizer said, believing God lived and died

in Christ, that the church lied

about becoming the body—but what Altizer said

was not what most thought he meant,

which was in death, life—a spirit

indwelling to drill the dying down,

incarnate carnage, God’s passion.

If you ask me, I’m proof he was right.

If you listen to my rat-a-tat melody

echoing my drumming beak, you may hear

an answered prayer of oneness, in desire’s

shrill tattoo, and the thrumming

of your own wild heart.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. Her work has appeared recently in Superstition Review, Valparaiso Review, Barrow Street, Potomac Review, Glass Poetry Journal, The Christian Century, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of an International Merit Award in the Atlanta Review's 2018 International Poetry Prize competition and a finalist in Sequestrum Literary Journal's 2018 New Writer Award competition. She is the author of The Heart Contracts (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Sarah works for the University of Florida and lives in Gainesville. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com.

Mammary Duct Ectastia

SWWIM Every Day
by Mary Lou Buschi

by Mary Lou Buschi

She said she knew how hard it was—

 

kite of knives pushing through

 

lactiferous ducts,

 

but she doesn’t.

 

Nothing has ever left her

 

 

with that much rage. Nothing inside her

 

ringing to get out.

Mary Lou Buschi’s collections of poetry include the full-length Awful Baby (2015) and the chapbooksTight Wire (2016), Ukiyo-e (2014), and The Spell of Coming (or Going) (2013). Her poems have appeared in many journals such as Radar, Willow Springs, Thrush, Dream Pop, and Field, among others.

Fellow Travelers

SWWIM Every Day
by Jenny Browne

by Jenny Browne

1. Apache Plume

 

The road is a drone note,

 

            also known as a burden.

 

I traveled but a short distance,

 

            late and thirsty, repeating

 

hold yourself empty,

 

            hold yourself full.

 

 

2. Desert Sumac

 

Sun rising

like an elegant

tranquilizer,

 

considering

the hockey

stick curve

 

of carbon

emissions,

considering

 

the hundred

year flood

again this one,

 

considering

I turn red

when crushed.

 

 

3. Creosote

 

That under-employed boyfriend

 

you could smell approaching

 

all summer, strumming his guitar

 

played only one song: 

 

            I know you rider

 

 

& we play it again

 

for the ringtail, the rattler

 

the javelinas, even

 

a magnificant hummingbird:

 

            gonna miss me when I’m gone.

 

 

4. Ocotillo

 

I keep thinking of the salt flats

& the great Neruda poem that says

I want no truck with death.

Once I asked a man what word

he would have chosen instead,

but he sped on toward Carlsbad.

Did you know truck comes from

the old French for barter?

I wonder how a translator chooses

between bear hug & strangle?

I didn’t say let’s make a deal.

Nights I still dream of the ocean,

waves big enough to drown

the engine that makes them. 

The exposed shoulders of the reef

grow colder with the past. Something

told me if I waited long enough

I could have that back too.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jenny Browne lives in San Antonio, Texas, and teaches at Trinity University. Her most recent collection is Dear Stranger. New work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Love's Executive Order, Harvard Review, and Oxford American. 

These Peonies

SWWIM Every Day
by Patrice Boyer Claeys

by Patrice Boyer Claeys

From just-June’s

                         generous sun

 

come snouts through solid

                                        soil like hogs

 

tracking truffles

                      in tangled leaf litter,

 

red rockets from

                          subterranean pads

 

borne up

            on blind bandy-legged stems,

 

obeying orders

                      of otherworldly wills

 

to defy the downward

                                drag of gravity,

 

these spiky shoots

                          upstretched and think

 

uncurl their curd-like

                                 culver buds,

 

transformed to feathers

                                     flounce of doves.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

After years in publishing and PR, Patrice Boyer Claeys joined Plumb Line Poets of Evanston, Illinois, and completed her first book, Lovely Daughter of the Shattering, soon out from Kelsay Books. Her work has appeared in Clementine Unbound, YDP, Postcard Poems and Prose, Typishly, Open: Journal of Arts & Literature, and Light - Journal of Photography & Poetry. Patrice reads for and contributes to the Mom Egg Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net.

The Church Office in the Summertime

SWWIM Every Day
by Cat Dixon

by Cat Dixon

The vent whistles and blows the papers from the desk to the floor—all those checks that need to be signed, all those welcome letters to be mailed, the return address label page missing an entire row. The carpet—littered with eraser dandruff, bent paper clips and crumbs from my Poptart— needs to be vacuumed. The filing cabinet with its open mouth calls, file, file, organize this shit. Instead, I slip the Leonard Cohen CD into the computer. “First We Take Manhattan” begins and I dust and vacuum and wipe. The window sill is filled with dead flies and grit. The lever on the office chair is caked in dust. The blessing bags for the homeless are piled underneath the table—all their strings knotted together. When the doorbell rings, and the man asks for help, I hand him four bags instead of one—too lazy to untwine them. He says, “I don’t need all this,” and I think, none of us do. 

__________________________________________________________________

Cat Dixon is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016; 2014) and a chapbook, The Book of Levinson (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She teaches creative writing at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She has poems (co-written with Trent Walters) in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).

Powerlessness

SWWIM Every Day
by KT Herr

by KT Herr

I thought I had exhausted all my metaphors: various prey; coins

inserted slant, jamming vending machines; cartoon hand over cartoon

mouth. I studied grim histories of hysterical patients, listened

to accounts of fish who change their sex to breed. I thought I knew what all

there is to know about glass: a viscous liquid forced to acquiesce

to rigidity. If I could learn the posture well enough I’d know

how to unlearn it. I practiced exhaustively. I was practicing

today as I sat smoking. Next door three men were lowering a door-

sized piece of plywood from the building’s distant roof. Above, one reversed

a winch while below another gathered slack, taming the spent plywood’s

wild twists. A third man stood, watched the plank pirouette toward several windows,

waited for the swinging scrap to reach the ground. You think I’m telling you

the story of the plank; how it feels to be trussed, grappled over. But

I am the third man, waiting for some purpose to come into my hands.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

KT Herr is or was: queer poet, songwriter, and grilled cheese enthusiast; advisory board member for Write616; poetry editor for The 3288 Review; host of WYCE’s Electric Poetry; Retort Slam finalist; writing workshop facilitator; MFA candidate in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College (2020). Her poems have been published with Pilgrimage Magazine, Punch Drunk Press, and Francis House, and her nonfiction has appeared in Goat’s Milk Magazine. She lives in Yonkers with someone else’s cat.

So That He May Step into the Tender Light

SWWIM Every Day
by Marcia J. Pradzinski

by Marcia J. Pradzinski

Let his body down in our

grainy ribbons of light 

along the bones of me.

On the ground, come morning the grasses will genuflect

with a dozen swirling constellations.

 

How silently a heart pivots on its hinge—

 

silent as the moment before the world was.

Eyes closed,

he falls into darkness,

receding from my grasp—

a person can die of motherhood.  

  

 

Cento Sources: David Caddy, Kwame Davis, Dorianne Laux, Alison Croggon, Cynthia Brackett Vincent, Marcia Hurlow, Jane Hirshfield, Elvis Alves, Hedy Habra, Louis Gallo, Karen Bowles, Sage Cohen

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Marcia J. Pradzinski, an award-winning poet, lives in Skokie, Illinois. Her poems have been featured in print and online. Recent and forthcoming publications include Clementine Unbound, Your Daily Poem, Ink In Thirds, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Honey & Lime. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Left Behind, in 2015. Her fellow poets help her stay productive. When not reading or writing, she enjoys water aerobics, walking, and going to movies.

Midlife Crisis

SWWIM Every Day
by Mia Leonin

by Mia Leonin

Just like that a barge drifted from my throat, listing 

from icy Nordic waters to the warm Mississippi Delta. 

 

Just like that I shook the moon from its claw 

and realized funnel cake magic was just powdered sugar. 

 

Just like that a concussion became a memory of betrayal, a pack 

toted off on the missing hump of a camel. 

 

Just like that I made peace with heaven 

and whether or not I was going to be invited to the after party. 

 

Just like that I traded in my many dresses for one 

then crawled out of that one and got on with my day. 

 

Just like that my dad—well, yeah, him. 

 

Just like that my mother’s pointer finger 

landed on Mars and transmitted satellite info 

 

from the worm in her bosom  

to the flower in my breast 

 

from the yowl of her silence 

to the om of my omniscience 

 

from her sidewinding 

to my stomping through 

 

from her branding and rebranding our life 

to my five-word review: Lunch. Table. Eat. Starve. Repeat. 

 

from her stomped blossoms and overburdened nightgowns 

to my room with a slit of mirror and salty lamp light. 

 

Just like that, mom came and went. 

When she touched me, she made no touches show 

 

and when she put on her face, a show for the millions, 

the laugh track guffawed at full force slobbering vodka to gin. 

 

Just like that, God doles out her punishment 

in the form of unfettered happiness 

 

and we are forced to build a stronger fort 

or ram our pole into the mud and push off 

 

from the creek’s sandy bank 

toward a farther, glittering shore.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mia Leonin is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Chance Born (Anhinga Press), as well as a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). A book-length poem, Fable of the Pack Saddle Child, was published by BkMk Press in 2018 with illustrations by Cuban artist, Nereida García Ferraz. Leonin has written extensively about theater and culture for the Miami Herald, New Times, and other publications. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.

When the Irises Don’t Come

SWWIM Every Day
by Kyle Potvin

by Kyle Potvin

I have survived the darts of winter icing my face

and scrubbed mud from the carpet all spring.

 

I have rejoiced at the sky turned bowl-like and blue

and studied the family of fox living beneath our forsythia.

And yet you do not appear, as you always do,

your purple palms upraised.

 

The spectacle of fireworks does not entice you,

nor the young blueberries about to burst

from their tight pods.

 

The tall stalks swish a strange summons,

first casual, then insistent. Still,

you do not come.

 

I can't explain this sadness.

 

All I know is that since I came to this place,

I have relied on you to open, so that each July,

I can place your stems in the guest room

for my mother, who, ill and slowing,

has yet to tell me if she will arrive.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kyle Potvin’s chapbook, Sound Travels on Water (Finishing Line Press), won the 2014 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. She is a two-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, The New York Times, Measure, JAMA, and others. She is an advisor to Frost Farm Poetry in Derry, NH, and helps produce the New Hampshire Poetry Festival. Kyle lives with her family in Southern New Hampshire.

After the Greeks Tippy-Toed out of a Horse

SWWIM Every Day
by Sarah Sarai

by Sarah Sarai

            Arms, and the man…

                        Virgil

 

Christ almighty was that a year.

The damn war FINALLY over

though one many-faced hero heroed-on

ten more to slay a weaver’s suitors lined-up

and slicked-back on Ithaca Ave.

 

THAT year, warriors de-warriorized, or tried to.

Mothers had died fathers had died wives

husbands aunts uncles sisters brothers had died.

 

But not one golden-guy,

with eyes a glinty glint

and sweaty sweat on biceps bulging.

 

Sailing sea-y seas Aeneas ashored on land

of a lady founder

who took one gandy gander and

plunged into bicepboy’s eyes—not deep pools—

 

and after the jumping-off-joy—

no small joy we agree—was deady dead,

having lit sticks and self and such when

loverboy sailed again. Soon,

the city-on-a-boot he birthed,

 

Rome, all Latinated and lawyered up,

warriorized and empired, though,

we admit, the engineering was good.

 

Those aqueducts and bridges, those walls. 

They were something else.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sarah Sarai's second full-length poetry collection, That Strapless Bra in Heaven, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2020. Her first collection is The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX) and her most recent chapbook is Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books). Her poems are in Ethel, Susan the Journal, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Prelude, Sinister Wisdom, Threepenny Review, Fifth Wednesday, Minnesota Review, and many other journals, as well as many anthologies. She lives in New York and works as an editor.

Yemaya (or Grandmother)

SWWIM Every Day
by Lea Anderson

by Lea Anderson

she throws her hair like a fisherman throws a net—

the dark threads draping across her shoulder’s sweep—

a body, themselves. languishing. shimmering with sweat

or sun. the boredom of barnacles half-steeped

in salt. what was it they say about the meek

and inheritance? her dark skin’s glistening.

the fact of her in the surf. waves lapping her feet

like excited hound-tongues. she’s listening

to the gulls cat-calling. they all want her.

the wind’s grabby hands, pressing her skirts

to the round of her hips. challenge demure.

the world, one large sopera in which we hurt—

above, the abalone sliver of crescent could be her heel.

this, the beginning or end of the earth at which we kneel.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Lea Anderson holds an MFA in Poetry from The New School. She received honorable mention for Boulevard's 2017 Contest for Emerging Poets. Her poems and other writing have appeared in Jai Alai Magazine and Luna Luna.

A Hole in My Heart the Size of a Postage Stamp

SWWIM Every Day
by Deborah Hauser

by Deborah Hauser

Dear Sir/Dear Parental Unit/No/Dear Sperm Donor/No/Dear

Male Relative/Stop/Dear old Dad/how many Our Fathers must

I say to make you appear/like Beetlejuice/why summon evil

spirits/how to apportion blame/to an empty

chair/MIA/absentee parent/you were tricked/ trapped/

torn/she turned you/in/to the Draft Board/she was daft/

I became deft/at avoiding her blows/I never learned/how/

to apply a tourniquet properly/the Girl Scouts don’t award

patches/for the survival skills I needed/she needled/ me/

endlessly/I wrote postcards in my head/having a splendid

time/not/wish you were here/to stop the beatings/brace

yourself/for stormy weather/there’s a cold front moving in/

to the guest room/you were my imaginary friend/perhaps

you wrote me too/invisible ink letters/never delivered/coded

messages/intercepted/by enemy hands/Hansel & Gretel/

my grim role models/my plastic red raincoat/she sent me

out/for milk and bread/I took the long way/home/longed

to be/lost/if I came back too late she locked me out/

always on the lookout/for something/to cling/to/a sharp-

toothed wolf/clever enough/to swallow me/whole.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and Carve Magazine. Her book reviews have been published at The Kenyon Review, Mom Egg Review, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She has taught at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College. She leads a double life on Long Island where she works in the insurance industry.

When Getting a Wax from Marisol

SWWIM Every Day
by Jennifer L. Knox

by Jennifer L. Knox

she tells me the story of giving herself 
a Brazilian when she was nine months pregnant. 

"Girl, you should be the fuckin’ President," 
I want to say, but instead I stick with 
"No, you didn’t!" 

"I did! It went on forever! I was like..." 
—she mimes tunneling up— 
"where's the top of this thing?!"

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of four books of poems. Her next book, Crushing It, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. Her poetry has appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series as well as in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and American Poetry Review. The New York Times said her 2015 book, Days of Shame & Failure, “hits, with deceptive ease, all the poetic marks a reader could want: intellectual curiosity, emotional impact, beautiful language, surprising revelation and arresting imagery.” Her non-fiction writing has recently appeared in The Washington Post and American Poetry Review. She is at work on a culinary memoir.



You Dress for the Army Ball

SWWIM Every Day
by Jennifer Markell

by Jennifer Markell

It isn’t green at all, this suit

you call Dress Greens,

not the color of living things

but what remains when a river

of ice is drained. You align

your shirt buttons with the front

fly seam, straight gig line

with the belt buckle’s edge.

Pin a grenade to your lapel,

sallow eagle, frozen in flight.

Turning to face the mirror,

you catch your reflection taking aim.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jennifer Markell's poetry collection, Samsara (Turning Point, 2014) was named a “Must Read Book of Poetry” by the Massachusetts Book Awards, 2015. Recent honors include the Firman Houghton award from the New England Poetry Club and Finalist for the Rita Dove Prize in Poetry (International Literary Awards, 2016). Her work has appeared in publications including Consequence, Gulf Stream, RHINO, Tinderbox, and The Women’s Review of Books. A psychotherapist, Jennifer's interested in therapeutic uses of writing.

Duration

SWWIM Every Day
by Amy Lemmon

by Amy Lemmon

The East River looks frozen, choked

eddies pulling in oppositions.

Cumulocirrus skies leak blue in spots.

 

You are not waiting at home

as you were so long, long ago,

solid point ’round which my currents churned.

 

Picking my way through stepped-on

frozen slush, I push my heart rate,

building stamina for the long haul.

 

How many more miles without you

or any other You? Families pass

on the promenade. The men

 

have all married younger wives.

The women are plush and beautiful,

their lips open delicately when kissed.

 

I have not forgotten how I had

to teach you softness, the relaxed tongue,

the release that made you squirm.

 

Spring is so late this year

we may never thaw again. Hard

to believe, harder to bend not break.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Amy Lemmon is the author of three poetry collections—Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008), Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009), and The Miracles (C&R Press, 2019)—and co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of the chapbooks ABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. Amy is Professor and Chairperson of English and Communication Studies at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and co-editor (with Sarah Freligh) of The CDC Poetry Project.

The Flowering Pear

SWWIM Every Day
by Tina Mozelle Braziel

by Tina Mozelle Braziel

never fruits. Yet each March blossoms burst

along every branch raised over our neighbors’

bed of daffodils and glinting windmill art.

 

Its pale petals screen dark limbs, a bridal veil

drawing attention to what’s obscured.

Alive and flowering, it’s unlike the windthrows

 

or widow-makers Nick usually offers us to cut

and haul to our woodpile. Generous to a fault,

he grins as if we’re doing him the favor.

 

He says it has been pretty and still is. Tells us 

they planted it on their wedding day. But now

that Judy says it’s invasive, it has to go.

 

Married four years to their twenty, what do we know

of when to hew and root out a beginning, 

of how to save all that has been cultivated since?

 

We know oak burns steady. Dogwood catches quick.

Sweetgum is nearly impossible to split. Poplar

puts out too little heat. And flowering pear?

 

What else can we say? But that we need fire

and wood to feed it. We’ll haul it home,

fill our stove, learn something of how it burns. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tina Mozelle Braziel, author of Known by Salt (Anhinga Press) and Rooted by Thirst (Porkbelly Press), has been awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, an Alabama State Council on the Arts fellowship, and an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park. She directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop at UAB. She and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they are building by hand on Hydrangea Ridge.

Desperate Beauty

SWWIM Every Day
by Gail Goepfert

by Gail Goepfert

—I paint flowers so they will not die. 

Frida Kahlo

 

We are watchers, Frida—

aching but obedient to light,

 

resurrected by shocks of color.

Mornings you pluck

 

bougainvillea or pearly

gardenias, plait them in your hair

 

above your brow. I shadow

the fire of spring poppies

 

and the profusion of lilacs

and pink hydrangea.

 

With the organ pipe cactus,

you spike a sage-green fence

 

on the borders of La Casa Azul

tuned to the rhythms of sun

 

and rain—its lavender-white

flowers tint while you sleep.

 

Our love-eyes like greedy

tongues lick the rare-red

 

of wild angel trumpets.

We are aficionados. Pregnant

 

with joy in the garden’s cosmos.

We pursue hues like lovers’

 

lips, stalk columns of yellow

calla-lilies, praise the allure

 

of honey-petalled sunflowers

and the lobes of violet irises.

 

We thrive on iridescence—

our eyes attuned to its blessing.

 

Watchers. We bend near

in reverence to the bloom—

 

all pain humbled, stilled

for a time by beauty.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gail Goepfert, an associate editor at RHINO Poetry, is a Midwest poet, photographer, and teacher. She is the author of A Mind on Pain (2015), Tapping Roots (2018), and Get Up Said the World (Červená Barva, 2019). Recent or forthcoming publications include Kudzu House, Stone Boat, Postcard, Poems and Prose Magazine, Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, and Beloit Poetry Journal. See more at gailgoepfert.com.

Root

SWWIM Every Day
by Paula Bohince

by Paula Bohince

My birthright
to rival the dirt for primacy 
of earth (this inner 
outer space) stars 
of mica, tinselly give-offs 
to read by. 

I aspire, my spine 
spiraling out of skull and piercing 
sky, like a queen, 

and me, her foot- 
note, her shamed history.  

I ponder Brahms 
and Bauhaus. I have thoughts, 
spectacular or quiet 
depending on rainfall. 

No honey down here, but I 
lust, I grudge, 

I apprenticed myself 
to a darkness and sent up 
cardinal redness while I sinned 
in my brain, 

demonic or dull, 
either way lost to the aerial 
photograph, as my mind 
mapled air,  

my frayed and dendritic 
nerves, my lyrical 
impulses, separate as a corsage is 
from the wrist of the one 
who wears it.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paula Bohince is the author of three collections, all from Sarabande: Swallows and Waves (2016), The Children (2012), and Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods(2008).  Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Best American Poetry.  She has been an NEA Fellow, Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar, and Amy Clampitt House Resident.  She lives in Pennsylvania, where she grew up.

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